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THE 
PHILIPPINES, 



Justice Brewers Opinion. 



published by the 
Anti-Imperialist League of New York, 

150 Nassau Street. 



Gift 

Qen. W. Birney 
N 2 '06 



^ 3 



,^1 



The Philippines. 



[Extracts from an address by the HON. DAVID 
J. Brewer, Associate Justice of the Supreme 
Court, delivered at Buffalo, N. Y.] 

Many plans are suggested for the disposal of the 
Philippines. One is to withdraw our army and navy 
and leave the inhabitants to do the best they can for 
thems-elves. Another is to continue an armed force in 
• possession for the purpose of preserving order until 
such time as the inhabitants have organized and put into 
active operation something like a stable government. 
Third, while leaving the control of internal affairs to 
the inhabitants, to establish something in the nature 
of a protectorate^ — one that will guarantee peace within 
and protect against invas'ion from without. Fourth, to 
treat the islands as so much prope;'ty. ahd sell them for 
what we can get — selling to any responsible purchaser 
and one likely to establish good government in the 
islands-. Fifth, to make them colonies, to be governed, 
by the United States, thus introducing into the life of 
this- nation the colonial system which obtains among 
the European Powers. And sixth, to incorporate these 
islanders as fellow-citizens, establishing therein at first 
territories with the view of subsequent admission . into 
the Union as States. 



The only matters I desire to consider are those in- 
volved in the last two propositions. Each of them I 
believe freighted with peril, and I am glad that the 
determination has been made to hold those questions 
open for deliberate consideration, and not by hasty 
action to do that which once done might prove to be 
of lasting and irretrievable injury. 

And, first, of the colonial system. Confessedly it 
will be a departure in the history of this country — an 
as yet untried experiment. It is said that the Anglo- 
Saxon race has manifested a capacity to govern well; 
that we are of that race and that, therefore, we could 
well govern those islands as colonies. India and Egypt 
are pointed to with pride as the achievements of our 
race in the way of government. I do not question the 
capacity of the race on either side of the waters to well 
and wisely govern others-. I object to it because it an- 
tagonizes the principles upon which this Government 
was founded, which have controlled its life up to the 
prtesient time, and the perfection of which has been the 
hope and aspiration of every true American. Those 
principles were expressed in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence in these words: 

"We hcM these truths to be s'elf-evident, that all men 
are created equal, that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among 
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
That to secure these rights governments are instituted 
among men, deriving their just powers from the con- 
sent of the governed." 

Upon these immortal principles this- Government was 
established, and we have again and again acclaimed to 
the world that they a«<the foundations upon which this 
Government rests, and have appealed to our prosperity 
and success as evidence of the justice of those prin- 



ciples. Somehow or other 1 still believe in the Decla- 
ration of Independence. 

The as'sumption of divine authority has been the cry 
of every despot from Louis XIV., who said, "I am the 
state," to that madcap on the German throne who is 
credited with saying, "Me und Gott." But with a 
diviner insight and a truer reverence we have believed 
that government derives its powers from the governed. 
I glory in the fact that my father was an old-line Abo- 
litionist, and one thing which he instilled into my youth- 
ful soul was the conviction that liberty, personal and 
political, is the God-given right of every individual, and 
I expect to live and die in that faith. 

The great war between ,the States- was but an effort 
to make those principles more far reaching in their 
application, and every step forward along our history 
has been towards a more perfect realization of this ideal. 
Now, government by force is the very antipodes of this, 
and to introduce government by force over any porjion 
of the nation is to start the second quarter of the sec- 
ond century of our life upon principles which are the 
exact opposite of those upon which we have hitherto 
lived. It is- one thing to fail of reaching j>our ideal; 
it is an entirely different thing to deliberately tui-n your 
back upon it. It is doubtless true that government by 
force often secures order and peace, but order and 
peace are not the only purpose of government. Order 
reigned at Warsaw. The test of gpvernment is not in 
the outward mechanical display of order, but in the 
capacity to develop the best men, and we have lived in 
the faith that government by the consent of the gov- 
erned develops the best men We have not let the 
wise rule the ignorant, the learned the unlearned, the 
rich the poor, but wc have appealed always to thos-e 
whom Abraham Ivincoln called "the plaiii people" as 

S 



the ones on whose judgment to rely, and upon whose 
shoulders should rest the burden of government. 

Ideas are, after all, the eternal forces. Human life 
and destiny are controlled by them. They may seem 
to-day of little significence, but around them gather 
material interests and to-morrow their power is dis- 
closed. 

It is a universal law that no family or nation will 
prosper whose foundation ideas are not harmonious and 
consistent. If conflicting, there is nothing more cer- 
tain than that trouble will follow. Our own history 
furnishes a tremendous les'son in this direction. We 
commenced our national life declaring, as its founda- 
tion principle, that all men were created equal; that they 
possessed inalienable rights — life, liberty and the pur- 
suit of happiness. But we tolerated a conflicting 
thought. We attempted to limit our foundation prin- 
, ciple to white men and deny it to black. It was a 
compromise. It seemed a small matter. The antago- 
nism would disappear with time. But we forget that 
ideas are living forces. 

William H. Seward divined the whole situation when 
he affirmed an "irrepressible conflict." Abraham Lin- 
coln saw the inevitable struggle when he declared that 
this nation could not endure half slave and half free. 
And after nearly a century we paid the penalty in the 
awful sacrifice of the Civil War. 

Shall we forget the lesson of the past? Shall we say 
it is a trifling matter to introduce into the life of this 
nation, which affirms that government derives all its 
powers- from the consent of the governed, the thought 
that that is true of only one race and not of all? — that 
the consent of the governed may be recognized for one 
portion and one race and repudiated for another portion 
and another race within the same dominion? 
6 



Government by consent and government by force, no 
matter how well the government may be administered. 
are two essentially .antagonistic principles. Doubtless 
no immediate conflict will follow. We may see a large 
measure of prosperity; but are we not sowing the seeds 
which in the days to come will grow up into a harvest of 
trouble for our children and our children's children? 

The possibility is not changed by the unquestioned 
fact that the Anglo-Saxon race has the capacity for 
governing other races-, nor by the singular prosperity 
which has attended England in her colonial system. In 
comparing the two nations it must be remembered that 
England's colonial system commenced when the king 
was one in fact as well as in name. The consent of the 
governed was only a little factor in English life when 
she first reached out her hand to subdue and control 
other racc^. It was no more for the king to govern 
Canada and India than it was for him to govern Eng- 
land; and, while the consent of the governed has been 
struggling and growing in England, it has not even yjet 
become the single, dominant, controlling fact of that 
nation's life; so that the antagonism between the two 
ideas of government by consent and government by 
force has never, in that empire, been fully developed. 

With us- the case is different. We stand consecrated 
to the single political idea of government by the consent 
of the governed. To introduce into the life of the na- 
tion the other thought of government by force is, at the 
very outset, to precipitate a conflict which, sooner or 
later, must inevitably result in disaster. 

Neither have we been so successful in our treatment 
of dependent races in the past as to justify any exalted 
expectations for the future. We have called the Indian 
tribes the wards of the nation, and our best citizens have 
striven from the beginning of the Government to the 

7 



present time to secure to them their just rights, and 
with what result? The eccentric Congressman from 
New Hamps'hire is credited with the statement that the 
Puritans marched among the Indians with a Bible in 
one hand and a rifle in the other. They converted 
those they could with the one and disposed of the rest 
with the other. Helen Hunt has told the story of our 
dealings with these tribes in a book which she entitles 
"A Century of Dishonor." Are we entirely sure that a 
century of dishonor in respect to savages near at home 
will not be followed by a millennium of dishonor in re- 
spect to those beyond the seas? 

To hear some talk you would think that all the influ- 
ences going out from this Christian nation to the 
heathen have been Christian, purifying, elevating; but 
the fact is that even from Puritan New England there 
have gone more hogshead of rum than missionaries, 
more gallons of whiskey than Bibles. If any one imag- 
ines that this will be changed when we come into con- 
trol of the Philippines and attempt to rule them, that 
thereafter only missionaries and Bibles will pass thither 
from America, he sadly underrates the locomotive 
capacity of the devil. 

Again, a necessity of colonial possessions is an in- 
crease in our regular army, and the first increase pro- 
posed is from 30,000 to 100,000 men. It is a strange 
commentary that at the close of the nineteenth century 
the head of the most arbitrary government in the civil- 
ized world, the Czar of theRussias, is inviting the nations 
of the world to a decrease in their arms, while this, the 
freest land, is proposing an increase in its. Yet such 
seems the imperative need, if we enter upon the system 
of colonial expansion. We have lived and prospered 
for 123 years with a handful of legular troops. We 
have preserved peace at home and have been respected 



abroad. Government by the consent of the governed 
has little need of the soldier. So the world has come 
to believe, and so it is. Are we ready to forfeit this 
high position? Do we not endanger the very founda- 
tion principles of this Government when we make the 
blare of the bugles and the tramp of the armed bat- 
talion the music which is heard on every side and the 
inspiration which attracts the ambition of our youth? 

But there is money in it. And after all this is really 
the rriost potent factor in the proposed reaching out af- 
ter the islands of the Orient. The wealth of Ormus 
and of Ind is to-day, as in the days of Milton, the ex- 
pectation and the dream of many. Possession of the 
Orient, with its accumulated wealth of centuries, dazzles 
the imagination and confuses the judgment. The haze 
of mystery hangs over that vast domain. Wealth un- 
told is believed to be there, ready to be appropriated 
by any dominant power. All the nations and tribes 
come within Lord Salisbury's definition of dying na- 
tions, and must s'oon be divided between and appro- 
priated by the living and growing nations. China is 
held out as a dying nation, filled with inexhaustible 
wealth, and why should we not share in its appropria- 
tion? What a picture this is — the eagle of liberty stand- 
ing like a buzzard, to grow fat over an expected corpse? 
When a Washington doctor of divinity the other day 
in conversation with the Chinese Minister, in reference 
to the possession taken by Germany of part of her ter- 
ritory, said it seemed to him that Russia and England 
were likely to follow the same example and appropriate 
some Chinese territory, the sarcastic reply was, "Yes, 
that is the way Christian nations do." 

All this talk about destiny is- wearisome. We make 
our own destiny.' We are not the victims, but the mas 
ters, of fate, and to attempt to unload upon the 
9 



Almighty responsibility for that which we choose to do 
is not only an insult to Him, but to ordinary human 
intelligence. We are told we have become so great and 
powerful that the world needs' us, but what the world 
most needs' is not the touch of our power, but the bless- 
ings of our example. It needs the bright example of 
a free people not disturbed by any illusions of territorial 
acquisition,, of pecuniary ^in, or military glory, but 
content with their possessions and striving through all 
the abilities, activities, and industries' of their wisest 
and most earnest to make the life of each individual 
citizen happier, better, and more content. 

My friends, two visions rise before me: One pf a 
nation growing in population, riches, and strength; 
reaching out the strong hand to bring within its do- 
minion weaker and distant races and lands; holding 
them by force for the rapid wealth they may bring-' 
with perhaps the occasional glory, success, and sacrifice 
of war; a wondrously luxurious life into which the for- 
tunate few shall enter; an accumulation of magnificence 
which for a term will charm and dazzle, and then the 
shadow of the awful question whether human nature 
has changed, and the old law, that history repeats itself, 
has lost its force, whether the ascending splendor of 
imperial power is to be followed by the descending 
gloom of luxury, decay, and ruin. The other of a na- 
tion where the spirit of the Pilgrim and the Huguenot 
remains the living and controlling force, affirming that 
the Declaration of Independence, the farewell address 
of the Father of his Country, and the Monroe doctrine 
shall never pass into innocuous desuetude; devoting its 
energies to the development of the inexhaustible re- 
sources of its great continental territory; solving the 
problem of universal personal arid political liberty, of 
a government by the consent of the governed, where no 
lo 



king, no class, and no race rules, but each individual 
has equal voice and power in the control of all, where 
wealth comes only as the compensation for honest toil 
of hand or brain, where public service is private duty; 
a nation whose supreme value to the world lies not in 
its power, but in its unfailing loyalty to the high ideals' 
of its youth, its forever lifting its strong hand, not to 
govern, but only to protect the weak; and thus the 
bright shining which brightens more and more into the 
fadeless eternal day. 

Brethren. Ebal and Gerizim are before us. Might 
and right stand on either side with their great appeals. 
"To every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; 
Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the 

Word; 
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne. 
Yet the scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own. 

"We see dimly in the present what is small and what is great. 
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, 
But the soul is still oracular; and amid the market's din. 
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within, 
'They enslave their children's children who make compromise 
with sin.' " 



For copies, address the Anti-Imperialist League ot 
New York, 150 Nassau Street, or P. O. Box 11 11, New 
York City. 



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